Mac Layer Design And Evaluation Of A Narrowband Wi-Fi System

Future Internet of Things (IoT) applications require enhancements of wireless communication systems in battery consumption, transmission ranges and the number of connected devices. The recent development of the 802.11 standard adds key technology components for Wi-Fi to further evolve and address the IoT requirements. In this paper, we present the medium access control (MAC) layer design of a narrowband Wi-Fi system tailored for IoT connectivity. The presented system is featured with access point (AP) controlled scheduling which enables harmonized coexistence of narrowband operations with traditional Wi-Fi transmissions. We also evaluated the performance of the system with simulations and identified features to improve latency and system capacity.